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NT intervention Indigenous health checks 'nothing new'

By Sara Everingham

20 June 2008 - It is a year this weekend since former prime minister John Howard and his Indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough declared the sexual abuse of Indigenous children in the Northern Territory a national emergency.

One of the first measures to be rolled out as part of their Northern Territory intervention were child health checks for Indigenous children.

Those health checks are due to finish at the end of this month, but only just over 60 per cent of children in Indigenous communities have had them.

The central Australian former mission of Hermannsburg, west of Alice Springs, is one of the towns where the intervention has played a part, and unlike a year ago, as the intervention was beginning, the days are now quiet.

The children there were among the first to receive health checks when an interstate health team rolled into their community last August.

It left some of the local staff, including Aboriginal Health Worker Reneta Kantawara, bemused.

Just two months before, they had done a similar round of checks.

"To me it was a bit odd because we've been doing those checks in the clinic whenever there's cause. We have school age kids, we have screens and all that at the clinic," she said.

But still, there was hope the checks could help improve children's health.

Hermannsburg and the surrounding outstations are home to about 700 Western Arrernte people.

Mavis Malbunka is one parent who brought her children in for health checks.

"Yes I did encourage our children. We brought the children from our outstation to have their check-up through health check teams that came out," she said.

"Also some of them in my group have found they have a bit of problem with ears and also with the heart so the clinic organised for our kids to go in for a health check-up and for an x-ray to see what happened and what caused that problem."

She says the effect has been a positive one.

"They had more treatment. The little one had a heart problem but that was fixed and my older one that had problem with her ears and that was fixed. She was sent into Alice Springs for a check-up," she said.

"I was a bit worried but I thought it's going to be a good thing for our kids to get checked up."

But many children in Hermannsburg did not have the checks - still slipping through the cracks.

Hermannsburg clinic manager John Wright says only about 140 were checked initially.

"They were obviously aiming to catch all of the children which would have been about 300, so they got about half them," he said.

He also says nothing new in particular was uncovered.

"Overall no. The level of ear health problems were already known to the people we report to," he said.

But Mr Wright says the follow-up that some are now getting makes the health checks worthwhile.

"Quite a lot of the children who were down for ear, nose and throat referrals have been seen and treated in Alice Springs," he said.

"Just in the last few weeks we've started a dental blitz and most of the children on our list that needed urgent dental care have actually received that care, so the follow-up has been the big change."

At the Alice Springs Hospital the follow-up surgery is continuing.

Dr Jerry Crispe is one of the interstate ear, nose and throat specialists who has flown in temporarily to help get through the waiting list, but he is worried what will happen after he is gone.

"In the normal situation they'd be mostly be followed-up, where as here they're going to go back to their communities, they'll have a district medical officer to check them and if they have problems they could come back to Alice Springs," he said.

"But it would be nice to have more people on the ground, more specialists on the ground, to actually review them on a regular basis until they're fully healed."

Back in Hermannsburg, Mavis Malbunka hopes the focus on child health will continue.

"We do like to see more follow-ups with our kids' health checks - that was what happened before. We would like to see more follow up please," she said.

Source: ABC

Further information: NT Intervention and health issues page - includes news index and external links

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